


Secrets that we Keep (When you're talking in your sleep)

by TheDameintheRaininMaine



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Based on spoilers, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-08
Updated: 2015-02-11
Packaged: 2018-03-06 16:32:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3141212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDameintheRaininMaine/pseuds/TheDameintheRaininMaine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Barry and Iris come together easy as pie. But there are always the things left unsaid.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Kissing Barry had been so easy. 

Iris really shouldn't have been surprised. But she had been so sure it would be weird. That had been the first thing she had thought when Barry had told her how he felt over Christmas. That it should be weird. 

Her and Barry had always just been. They were the best of friends. Every night spent sitting up watching TV at home, every night away at school on the phone. That had always been them. 

The idea of it being romantic had never even occurred to Iris. 

As the weeks went on, she had to adjust to the idea. Every little interaction being replayed over in her mind, he's in love with me, in the background of every single one. 

Eventually, two thoughts took hold in Iris's mind. 

One, that her and Barry could have been the only two people left in the world, and she would be perfectly happy. 

Two, that the very idea of her world without him, made all of the air in the room disappear. 

It's these two thoughts, that combine with the strange, fluttery feeling Iris has been feeling every time she's been around Barry lately, and finally allow her to admit the truth. 

Barry Allen loves her

And Iris West loves him right back.

Of course, putting these thoughts into words had been more than a little difficult. Difficult and awkward. 

Iris had always teased Barry about being so shy around girls, but when she tells him, that day by the water, she's as tongue tied as he always was. 

But his hands found her face, and their lips found each other, and they fit together like they were made for one another. 

When they finally part, Barry has this kind of half hopeful, half cautious look on his face, and he asks, 

"OK?"

Laughter bubbles up, unbidden, from deep in Iris's gut. She feels lighter than air. 

"Competely."

Barry's face then explodes into a smile as big as the sun.

_Oh god, she's in deep._

Then he throws an arm around her and they keep on walking. That's easy too. 

There's more kissing, a lot more that night. 

And more, of course. 

That had been easy too. Even the parts involving nudity. 

He's awestruck when she takes off her bra, and she bursts out laughing. 

"Oh god Bear, you look like you've never seen seen a pair of breasts before". 

The smile doesn't leave when he reaches out tentatively, like she might tell him to stop. 

"But none of them were yours". 

Barry has freckles all over his thighs. It seems ridiculous that Iris never knew this. It feels like something she should have known. She wants to kiss each one, follow them up as far as they go. She wants to map out his throat until she finds just that one spot that made him let out a high pitched noise she'd never heard him make before. 

(God, she wants to trace every contour of his abs while making him tell her how he had them and she never knew). 

It's not like in the movies. There's no swelling music, no soft lighting. There's a lot more giggling, a lot more shaking fingers, a lot more of Barry knocking his head against his headboard. 

But even so, Iris can tell this is a big moment. One chapter ending, another beginning. 

Even if movies, it never felt this natural.

Unfortunately, there is one aspect of this new, budding relationship that isn't easy. 

That, is actually sharing a bed with him. 

Iris should have known better. When they used to sneak into each other's rooms as a kid, Barry or the both of them always slept on the floor, because otherwise she was going to end up there anyway. 

It was a good thing her and Joe had convinced Barry when he moved out that no grown man living by himself should sleep in a twin bed. 

A twin bed probably wasn't even large enough for Barry's oversized stick figure body alone. 

Currently, he was facedown, doing his best starfish impersonation. A fact that Iris realized when his hand reaches out and collides with the side of her face. 

She'd been neatly curled on her side, having some very excellent dream, when she snorts awake. 

"Barry" she nudges him, "roll over". 

He lets out a snore, but is amenable to Iris proding him, and ends up on his side in an almost normal position. 

Iris is almost asleep again before she notices that Barry's head has slipped off his pillow half way down the bed, and one of his feet had tangled with hers. 

OK, she can deal with this. At least his toes weren't cold. 

But first on their list when they get their own place (and thinking about that doesn't seem weird or too soon or presumptive at all) will have to be a bigger bed. 

Sleep was prodding at her again when she hears the first mumbles. 

Great, apparently Barry talks in his sleep too.

It's incoherent at first, and Iris thinks he's going to drift off again. 

Then it's something about the Weather Wizard. 

She sighs. She always makes him read whatever she writes for the Daily Planet, but if it's getting this far into his subconcious maybe she should back off. 

Then, straight through any sleepy haze. 

"You'll never catch me, I'm the fastest man alive."

Iris freezes. And nudges herself forward.

Carefully, she presses her head to his back, right below the neck of his tshirt, and wraps an arm around his side. 

Two things come to Iris's mind again. 

One, isn't a thought so much as a sensation. Her in his place, another night. A night on a rooftop when she felt nearly this breathless. 

Two, "What other girls?". 

Something hot pricks at Iris's eyes. She holds him a little tighter. 

"Oh Barry". 

Whatever comes after this, something tells her that it won't be quite so easy.


	2. Chapter 2

Morning comes with gentle sunlight, lazy, pleasantly sore limbs, and uncertainty.

It still doesn't make any sense to her.

Barry can't keep a secret to save his life. 

He told her the answers to the hard homework questions he finished first.

He told her what Dad got her for Christmas.

He told about her crush on Aidan Jones before she'd even gotten a chance to finish her sentence. 

(That one hadn't been entirely his fault. Jessica had sat down at the lunch table before Iris could swear him to secrecy. But still)

It doesn't make any sense to her that Barry could have had an entire secret life as a freaking superhero, and she didn't know.

True, she had never seen Barry and the Flash together...but she hasn't really seen him with anyone else either. 

And Barry had been eating like his stomach was a black hole lately...did superspeed use up more calories than normal? Iris had once tried to run a 5k in college on a stomach full of coffee and a granola bar and had passed out, and the Flash must run up to hundreds of miles a day...

And besides, the Flash is like...really really fit. That red suit leaves nothing to the imagination (and Iris's imagination had run wild). 

She casts an eye down Barry's sleeping form. 

He is rather more...muscled...than Iris would have ever believed of his overlong giraffe body. 

The gray tshirt he's sleeping in has ridden up, exposing the rather well developed abs Iris had noticed last night. 

(she had been so curious where he had managed to get them, Barry was hardly a gym rat)

(God she wants to lick them so badly)

(Focus West, you're supposed to be in investigative mode)

But then Barry starts to stir, and weaves the fingers of one hand through her hair while murmuring sleepily and Iris lets herself settle back into the easy blissfulness of the previous day. 

For the most part. 

"Are you ok?" Barry asks her at one point "you seem...I don't know, far away". 

She forces a smile that feels easy "I guess I don't know if I want to go out into the world just yet". 

And their fingers wander, and the truth is postponed, at least for a bit. 

But Iris is a reporter through to her soul, and she has to keep looking. Observation, true observation of all aspects of an event, big and small, is vital to a reporter's skill, as her professor once said. 

Some of it's small.

When they finally find the energy to leave the house, they end up at a little breakfast place they used to go on Sundays as a family before college. It has a buffet, and pancakes in four different flavors. They both usually would end up comatose on the couch for the rest of the day.

Iris counts this time. Barry brings back at least ten plates. Not lightly filled ones either. 

(Goddamn, that really isn't fair). 

Just to needle him, when he gets up to refill his drink, she steals two of his sausages.

Some of it isn't.

The rest of the day, everything and nothing happens. They walk around the park, she helps him shop for groceries, they go back to his place again and watch TV (and make out), she works on a piece for work while he talks endlessly about another scientific paper she doesn't quite understand. They have dinner (and christen his kitchen table), and decide to go to bed early. 

It's surreal. It's so strange for Iris to think that tomorrow will be Monday, and they'll both have to go to work, and eventually tell people about all of this. 

But for now, Barry's cuddling her from behind, his nose pressed into the back of her neck, murmuring about how he doesn't want to get up in the morning. 

But Iris, in that moment, is back on the rooftop of Jitters, with the butterflies running wild in her stomach and the Flash's breathe on her neck, so close, yet so unseen. 

And if she shuts her eyes, she swears she can pick out the sounds of his voice.

Iris has taken more than her share of psychology courses. She knows the things that could be affecting her observations. Confirmation bias. The focusing effect. Hindsight bias.

She has to push something. Force something to happen that will prove her hypothesis (oh god, she's starting to sound like Barry). 

Iris spent her entire childhood wanting to be a detective, and now y'that is going to work in her favor. 

It's a fairly easy setup. They're having dinner back at home with Joe later in the week, and Iris had told them that she had found some photos on her laptop she wanted to show him. 

And so, afterwards, she feigns searching for her bag, and asks

"Barry, can you go see if I left it in the car?"

Her bag isn't in the car. She rather collected it earlier that night and left it very conspiculously by the front door of his apartment. 

She's also sitting close to the partially open window. They had parked around the corner. 

And just in the edges of her periphrial vision, she sees just a hint of a human sized blur. 

Barry returns with her bag barely a minute later. 

"Here, it was just stuck behind the seat."

Iris takes it, smiles, says thank you. 

Experiment a success. 

Then she sees her dad catch Barry's eye, and she freezes again. 

There are six necessary parts of every story. 

What was easy, who too (even though there were more who's than she had initially thought). Where and when are debatable, but not something to make or break (struck by lightning...that does sound like something out of a comic book). 

How is still the question. 

How could both of them keep this from her. How could both of them manage to keep their mouths shut?

Iris stands up, and clears her throat. 

"Barry, can I talk to you outside for a minute?"

He looks to Joe quizzically for a minute, before following her and shutting the door.

(as long as she keeps being stuck on "how" she doesn't have to think about "why")

(and a good interrogation usually reveals the why).

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired both by today's spoiler pics, and reading the comic Flash wiki.


End file.
